On a crisp fall morning in New England, just off the beach, Todd Blewett stood at the starting line of his first marathon with his daughters. The setting was beautiful - beach air, cold sky, a few thousand runners before sunrise - but what stayed with him was the uncertainty of the last six miles, which they had never run in training. One of his daughters, balancing medical school and marathon training, worried she would not finish before the cutoff. By the end of the day, they had all crossed the finish line.
What made that race memorable was not just that they finished. It was the lesson his son, who first signed him up for a marathon, insisted on from the beginning: sometimes you commit first, and then you do what it takes to see it through - a mindset Todd now carries into his work at BioDuro. That is also how he thinks about his ten years at the company.
As Vice President of Business Development in North America, Todd is not in the lab day to day, but his work sits close to the science. He helps connect BioDuro’s discovery and CMC capabilities with the clients who need them, translating what happens inside the company’s labs into partnerships that can move programs forward, through multiple market cycles and company transitions.
Trained as a chemist, he always knew he was not meant to spend his whole career at the bench and was drawn early to sales and business development. What kept him in life sciences was the chance to stay close to meaningful science without being the one running the experiments. At BioDuro, that role became especially tangible. “There has to be a way to translate what happens in a lab in China to a client in the U.S.,” he says. “That’s where business development really fits in.”
The culture mattered too. When Todd joined, BioDuro described itself as having a family feel. For him, that language translated to accountability: when you commit to colleagues and clients, you show up for them, the same way you show up for your family on race day after months of training.
Over his ten years at BioDuro, Todd has watched the company change shape more than once. “The biggest inflection point for me was 2019,” he says, “when Advent came in as our majority investor and we started merging and adding new capabilities.” Overnight, BioDuro became part of a much larger, more integrated CRDMO platform, with more sites and coordination across geographies.
“What has been interesting,” Todd reflects, “is that even when the U.S. market got tough, we did not just pull back.” Instead, he watched BioDuro make deliberate bets on the future -building a peptide center of excellence, moving into ADCs and other emerging modalities, and strengthening infrastructure to support both large pharma and smaller biotech clients more effectively. These are the investments he now helps explain to clients as part of where their science is heading next.
“The terrain shifts,” he says, “but BioDuro keeps moving - adjusting pace, adding capability, and staying focused on getting programs to their next milestone.”
For Todd, this is where business development becomes part of being “behind the science”: not just bringing in work, but making relationships run smoothly enough that the science can move at speed.
At a recent public event, two clients were asked what mattered most in a CRO relationship. Both pointed to communication - clear, fast, honest communication and both cited Todd as an example. For him, it summed up the quiet part of his job: keeping things moving by getting clients the information, contracts, and decisions they need quickly so BioDuro’s teams can progress without unnecessary friction.
One program from his early years at BioDuro still stands out. “It was a mid size pharma company that knew they were an acquisition target,” he says. Working across an integrated program, BioDuro accelerated the work over about a year, helping the client reach a preclinical candidate and a clinical formulation before the acquisition—work that meant the project stayed alive and kept moving under its new owner.
“For me, that’s BioDuro at its best,” Todd says. “Integrated science, people across functions stepping in when we needed them, and a willingness to keep adjusting until the client’s program was in a stronger position.”
If there is one principle that guides how Todd handles hard moments, it is honesty: when projects go off course, he acknowledges the problem quickly, involves the right people, and works with the client on a path forward. Some of the contacts from earlier BioDuro programs have since moved on to new companies, but he still works with them today.
“For me, the real ‘long race’ in business development isn’t a single contract or a good quarter,” he says. “It’s the relationships you build over time, across different companies, roles, and shifting scientific priorities.” That is also how he sees BioDuro’s value - as a CRDMO rooted in science, but defined by the partnerships it stays with over the full arc of a program.
“After ten years here, a lot of the people I work with have been part of a big chunk of my career,” he reflects. “Those relationships are a huge part of why I’m still here. You stay for the business, but you really stay for the people doing the work.”
As BioDuro marks 30 years, Todd sees the milestone the way he sees a marathon: not as a finish line, but as proof of consistent preparation. In his words, “the end of the marathon is guaranteed by the preparation that you put in.” Thirty years in this industry requires adaptability, quality, and a willingness to keep showing up through changing conditions.
His own philosophy - the one his children know by heart - is simpler still: life is the journey, not the destination. There are goals and finish lines, but it is today’s miles that count.
Todd has spent a third of that journey at BioDuro, helping clients, colleagues, and the company itself keep moving forward - one mile, one relationship, and one program at a time.
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